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Tudor facades, mocked as we crept from the crypt

Beneath Maples that cradled Phosphor.

Suburbia, napping, yawns and allows

Tintoretto to drape over the scene

A Venetian sky’s light pollution,

St Mark’s body brought to Venice.

Bound In tandem with the estuary

A needle stitching the seam of dusk,

Where it seems a comfort to be free,

Brush the strewn paper along the aisle,

Sit idle, and draft

The tableau of my arrival.

press release for the bland tangerines

The Black Tambourines, are not:
A group of percussionists
A beck cover act or
A plural of the seminal 80’s noise band

What they are is Cornwall’s premier surf-rock band. The lineup is: Jake Willbourne, the formidably creative punk Buddhist who croons, yelps and plays bass, Paddy Staccpoole the taciturn guitarist who catcalls, paints, sings and rarely smiles, Jim Sibley the urbane drummer and keen cyclist who defies every tub-thumping stereotype going and Josh Spencer the languid hip-hop enthusiast who’s wall of guitar noise unifies the group.

The fourtet emerged in a puff of weed smoke from the primordial soup of Truro College’s music course and began to notch up regular appearances at gig’s put on by the tireless promoters at Duelling Kazoo’s and Dirty Sunday’s. After only a series of gigs the band began to generate real excitement amongst local music fans, as people flocked eager to witness the risk and energy of genuine rocknroll. For too long the Cornish had been limited to yawning through sets of either post-hardcore macho posturing or banal surf-songwriters at local gigs, so the arrival of the BT’s sent a strain of enthusiasm through the college populations.

Having recorded their eponymous first EP themselves in a hazy week last summer and finished college they set about consolidating the attention that surrounded them in more hectic performances. The songs on the ep deal with: unwanted attention ‘I don’t want to be yr lover’ the affectations of a local hipster ‘tommy’ and sticking two fingers up other peoples expectations ‘I can’t surf’ (and wishing happy birthday to paddy’s dad) All of this wrapped up in their rad and raucous blend of lo-fi garage. Achievements to date include their split seven inch on up and coming south-west imprint ART IS HARD RECORDS with like-minded Exeter dudes New Year’s Evil, with whom they shared a ferocious gig at Exeter cavern and are planning a Spring tour. Having shared a stage with acts like Jeff the Brotherhood and The Automatic (in steeply descending order of brilliance) and hosted their own smoky/strobe-lit gigs emblazoned in projected visuals of skateboarding, the band rarely turn in a dull show.

Perhaps the best crystallization of the disparate influences that are fused in the Black Tambourines circuits is their most recent ‘HOMBRE’ Ep (again self-issued & recorded). The EP does away with the murkiness of its predecessor to reveal the sheer strength of their current set of songs that now share triple vocal duties between Spencer, Jake and Paddy. As the songs clearly show, the BT’s don’t shy away from melody- and songs like ‘Vitamin D’ with its final emphatic refrain demonstrate their love for the likes of Brian Wilson. This isn’t a band likely to buckle to musical orthodoxy or one that can’t evolve. No, this music defies the homogenization of your standard listening experience to present you pure, undignified creativity at its most intact, affecting and downright fun.

FUCK SHIT UP 2K11

The Conversation

As Gene Hackman (a very appropriate name as it happens) peers through the mist in his dream sequence he asserts, "i'm not afraid of death" and then after grasping for a few seconds concludes 'but i am afraid of murder" This hypnotic scene is perhaps the most unnerving and Lynchian part of a film that manages to detect the neurosis and frustrated responsibilities of the modern man in a distorted conversation with the viewer.

The story of Harry Cole, an uptight but professionally esteemed eavesdropper, bugger and phone hacker who taps into his conscience whilst recording an elliptical conversation held between a couple in a San Fransisco park. A devout catholic, the film follows a man though his existential dillema as it gradually dawns on him that the ethics of his trade are not as seemingly mundane as he had supposed. As he begins to suspect devious underlying motives beneath the malaise of his assignment, Cole is intent upon confronting the Director to get assurance that the couple will not be harmed. The futility of his efforts at locating the 'director' were evocative of K's struggle in The Castle to gain a meeting with the enigmatic Klamm, and the administrative hurdles thrown across his path (the obstinate receptionist, and Harrison Ford's malevolent personal assistant) just further reinforced the Kafkaesque impression.

I think it can be legitimately referred to as a postmodern film due to both its content and form. In a similar way to how Hitchcock's Rear Window makes the viewer bedfellows with a peeping tom, and consequently forces them to re-evaluate the voyeuristic side of the cinema, the conversation achieves the same self-analysis by looking behind the curtain of the couples unfolding narrative at the observer on the other side. The jerky, non-linear and fragmentary nature of the espionage makes for a prevailing spirit of suspense, manufactured, as it was in Rear Window, through the most minute of changes in the visibility or audibility of the subject. The subversion employed is that of revolving the lens onto the director of the recording, cole, who at first deflects any interest in the case onto the 'director', who is made unattainable by the machinations of his secretary- all of whom we then understand are pliable to the instructions of the true director Francis Ford Coppolla, shielded at all times from the scrutiny of the lens.

Harry Cole's dysfunctional,shrewd and mechanical dealings with people in combination with his catholic upbringing where reminiscent of Pinky in Brighton Rock, and how both manufacture an enigma around themselves in order to conceal a desperate loneliness. When Cole visits the prostitute he begins to illuminate an affection previously absent from his character yet this is reflexively withdrawn as soon as she begins to question him. This idea of the guarded and secretive inquisitor, skilled at peeling away the mysteries of others lives but cautious to the slightest intrusion into his own, is a fascinating paradox that has deservedly appeared in many thrillers. The most recent recycling of the Cole prototype would appear to be the protagonist in the real-life story of East German oppression The Lives Of Other's, who throughout yields no interference by his colleagues into his own opinions, interests or hobbies so as to avoid suspicion. Meanwhile he is documenting the every movement of the counterculturists under his surveillance, from discussion about minutia down to his bemused paraphrasing of their sex. In fact despite the different settings, the breadth of similarities is such that you have to stop to remind yourself that however fantastical such an environment may appear, the Stazi did exist and where active during the period coppola made his movie.

Overall a magnificently shot, compelling and disturbing drama- the final coda of which is still vividly present to my mind.Harry Cole slumped on the floor mournfully improvising on saxophone over the snaking piano theme, his shirt unfurled and clammy, surrounded by the detritus of the street-lit apartment he has turned upside down and stripped bare to find a trace of surveillance.